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Little Women

October 8, 2008 – 7:46 am

“You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.”

How many mothers today give such wise and well-worded advice to their daughters? That’s Mrs. March, or Marmee to her four girls, talking to her youngest in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Re-reading this classic is the perfect bedtime story – tales of the girls’ adventures told in charming sentences such as these. Alcott’s Little Women was an instant popular and critical success; it originally came out as two novels published in 1868 and 1869.

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October Poem

October 1, 2008 – 7:50 am

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.

As if they could tell time, the leaves of our crab apple tree just turned orange and red. In Robert Frost’s poem titled October (the first few lines are above), he implores the leaves to fall slowly. The signs of autumn are not as obvious here in a sage green landscape dotted with juniper and pine. But it’s unmistakable when you step out in the morning and feel the crisp air. Frost (1874 – 1963) is known for his themes of nature and rural life.

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Weekend Words: Daring Writing

September 27, 2008 – 2:25 pm

“Most of the things you read are simply people confirming what they already think. That’s why most of the things you read don’t interest you. There has to be some risk for the writer to make stuff come alive.”

Those sentences are from author Charles Bowden who you may have read in Esquire or GQ, heard on NPR or read in one of his books. Bowden takes risks as a writer by choosing subjects such as the environment, death, abandoned farmhouses in North Dakota, and drug wars on the Mexican border.

For his book Down by the River, Bowden was asked why he investigated a murder for more than seven years to tell the story of the border wars. He replied:

“All the roadblocks are just little obstacles, because you’re obsessed with finding out the facts. When you get into this kind of work, you just want to get it down right. What other people see as danger, you see as a nuisance. If I wasn’t writing that book, I never would have gone into the saloons and hellholes that are in that book. I don’t court danger.”

But it seems he’s not scared off by danger if that’s what it takes to tell the story.

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Fools & Angels

September 23, 2008 – 8:20 pm

“For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

In my Books to Read folder is E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread and I wondered where that familiar phrase came from. It is from Alexander Pope’s poem titled An Essay on Criticism. The phrase pits the reckless against the wise. Funny how a phrase from a poem most of us have never heard of becomes a popular idiom and makes its way to a book title as well as several song lyrics (think Elvis and Dylan).

I know in Forster’s first novel I’m in for a charming tale set in Italy with a tragic end. I’m guessing I’ll find both the idoita and the putto.

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Weekend Words: Power of Painting

September 20, 2008 – 11:11 am

“If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

American painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) said a lot without words. In Hopper’s famous Nighthawks, you can feel the isolation of the customers sitting at an all-night diner. He often painted common features of American life in a style which communicated loneliness. Hopper studied with New York’s so-called Ashcan School and traveled to Paris several times where he focused on realism rather than the cubist style of the time. He painted urban scenes from a gas station to Victorian buildings. As he put it, “Maybe I am not very human – what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”

His widow bequeathed thousands of his oils, watercolors, prints and other work to the Whitney Museum of American Art. You can learn about his influence and see his paintings at National Gallery of Art site.

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Dickens’ Thought on the Seasons

September 16, 2008 – 10:12 am

“Nature brings to every time and season some beauties of its own.”

Charles Dickens knew what he was talking about. I think Dickens’ sentence is lovely in its simplicity. Each fall, I get a bit sad that summer and outdoor living are ending. Then I need to remember the crisp air, geese, fires, soups, snowmen and other winter activities that will fill what used to be long summer afternoons.

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Weekend Words: Beginning to Read

September 13, 2008 – 9:35 am

If you have a beginning reader in your life, you know the joy that new skill brings. There are endless sites to help expand kids’ reading talents. Here are a few fun ones to share with your kids.

You’ll find an interactive alphabet book at Gigglepotz which helps with letter recognition. Starfall is one of my all-time favorites where my kids and I have played word games and enjoyed the moving pictures; it’s a free site developed by a man who struggled reading as a kid. The Screen Actors Guide Foundation has a site where they read stories; there are also accompanying activities. Happy reading!

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Evil to Triumph

September 11, 2008 – 8:27 am

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

This quote is usually attributed to Edmond Burke, though I found some discussion online as to whether or not he really said that. Burke was an Irish political philosopher who lived in the 1700’s and is regarded as the father of modern conservatism. It’s a quote which certainly heightens ones’ sense of responsibility. You could apply it to everything from your country’s politics to everyday life. It removes the excuse of not getting involved in “somebody else’s business” – because it is our business if we see injustice around us.

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Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme

September 9, 2008 – 8:31 am

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

This traditional poem is supposed to tell a child’s fortune based on the day they were born. Like many Mother Goose rhymes we have read to our kids, the words sound bouncy and fun read to but they don’t make much sense. I just took my Wednesday’s children to kindergarten and they were anything but woeful. They still like hearing even the most nonsensical Mother Goose rhymes, I think because they read like music.

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Weekend Words: Indian Summer

September 7, 2008 – 5:32 pm

“The air is perfectly quiescent and all is stillness, as if Nature, after her exertions during the Summer, were now at rest.”

An early American writer described Indian Summer in 1817 this way. It is usually described as a period of warm weather in the fall after the first frost. That’s certainly what we’re experiencing here in Central Oregon. Recently, we covered the tomatoes a few nights to save them from frost and now we’re enjoying pleasant 80 degree days. Soon, nature will rest…

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